PLN 8

In Karl Fisch’s Dear Denver Post, Would You Be Okay With Us Cheating on the CSAP, too? talks about how the Denver Post is setting a bad example, and also nationally known celebrities, and how they are cheating trying to change an outcome they didn’t like. Why this matters is because if people like Derek Jeter are cheating and trying to change results kids are going to think that it is going to be okay to cheat. So if the Denver Post is telling students to not be enthusiastic about school and talking about cheating then what kind of role models are they, and what is the message they are sending us? Students need strong people who are good role models that will teach us to do things the right way and work hard. If Derek Jeter thinks it is okay to cheat then kids in the classroom might think it is okay to cheat. So overall cheating gets no one anywhere and if celebrities are being talked about in the newspaper about cheating then how will they show us how we should live our lives. If schools cheated on CSAP then how do you think it would affect the schools reputation, CSAPs matter to the school's survival but if we cheat then it will hurt the school even more. So even if it is Derek Jeter's job to get on base he shouldn't cheat to get there, and neither should schools.

PLN 7

In Michael Wesch’s Web 2.0… The Machine is Us/ing Us, is about how the internet is controlling our lives and that we need to learn to not be so dependent. The video talked about humans teaching the machine or us to be dependent on the internet. This affects me because it shows me that my life is going to be based off the internet and I don’t want that, and I am going to be dominated by the web and base all of my decisions of it like I really didn’t make decisions for myself. The video said that the web is a source that many people use for learning and that we put all of our thoughts on it. This matters to education because it shows that a main source of material found is on the internet, and that most everything is on the world wide web. So students don’t need to look that hard for answers anymore and it is changing our thinking process. The world is so dependent on the internet now that we communicate through it, look things up on it, and base our lives of it. Humans are the machine and we are teaching it through the web.

PLN 6

In the blog Fischbowl, Karl Fisch talks about the Denver Post and their comments in the article Dear Denver Post-You’re the Disappointment, an article about the Denver Post talking about students being disappointed to go to school. It matters because if the post is writing about negative points on school and saying that we are disappointed to go it won’t give us a good reputation about learning. If the world thinks that we are all a bunch of teenagers who aren’t enthusiastic about learning then we won’t have much support from our elders. For education if people are telling us students that we should be disappointed for school then we will be lazy and not try hard. Our work ethic will go down the drain and we will all just quit in school. I don’t think the Denver Post meant to make the article negative towards education but they are our role models and if we did what they said then  all of us would be dropping out of school. So our elders need to teach us the right skills and work ethics toward things to help us succeed in life.

PLN 5

In Will Richardson’s Footprints in the Digital Age he talks about the things that we post on the internet could affect how people think about us or what our background will tell about our future. In the article it states that students need to post items on their blogs that will help them in the future and make them seem smart and influential. This will affect our education because we are posting things on the internet right now and we need to make sure that the things we post are correct and will help us make a good impression of ourselves to the people reading our blogs or postings. For example the little girl has a very good digital footprint because she was doing good things on the web with charity and was very influential. But other people make themselves seem like misanthropes because they post negative or mean things. The world needs to post smart things on the internet to make sure that people view them as smart good people. Having a good digital footprint will help everyone get far in life.

PLN 4

I read "Dang! I Just Missed It" by David Warlick an article about how education in the past needs to admit the mistakes it made and that our generation can learn from it. It was an article about seeing Mars with the naked eye as large as the moon, then people later learned that it all was just a big hoax. Warlick went on saying that in the 60s people didn’t question what they read, that what they read was always right, but that isn’t the case anymore there can be misleading facts such as saying you need a 75 magnification lens to see it as the size of the moon. Scientists also proved that we would die if Mars would be that close, the gravitational pole would kill and end life as we know it today. This mattered to me because peoples facts aren't always right and they might try to mislead me; so I need to pay attenetion to what is true and accurate to help maintain good grades. If students around the world are reading and taking in misleading facts then they won't learn true information that will help them learn the things they need to. The world needs to learn from the mistakes of the past and be taught to work on improving the facts of the future.

PLN 3

In the Article Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr I was a bit horrified by the fact that computer search engines are changing the way that our brain functions and that the world is going to be thinking and processing things different. Google is a good and bad thing for education, it holds the keys to many research projects and is a new easy way of learning a lot of the learning in school is on the internet. Google is also a very easy way to get distracted by going to different websites. Also it is a search engine that takes no effort you can just look things up very quickly and read a little paragraph with your answer, that is why our minds are changing and can’t focus as well because in Google they don’t need to. Google to the world is an important tool that people use daily and it is making us lazy because it takes no effort to look things up. Then when we actually need to look things up and study them it is hard to focus because it takes effort. But to the world it is also a good thing you can communicate with people and look up questions that need to be answered. People are so dependent on Google now though that if Google was taken out of the world then many people would suffer severely. Google overall helps us learn but also changes the way we think and how we process material, it can cure curiosity but corrupt the thinking process of life.